They had three – Lacey, thirteen, Kyra, nine, and Freddie, five. He’d stopped all physical contact eighteen months ago, because the younger two were becoming so distraught every time it came to saying goodbye that he thought it was unfair to put them through it. Less upsetting for him too. So instead of him travelling to Newark once a month they chatted on the phone fortnightly and sent messages whenever the urge took them, which was never as often as he’d like, and he never missed a maintenance payment for their keep, which equated to half his salary.

The lack of physical contact was something Alan had learned to endure, like a sprained ankle that only hurt when you walked on it. But now, hearing Gayle’s voice out of the blue, he yearned to see them again.

‘They’re really good.’

‘Do they miss me?’

The kids never said it to him when they spoke: usually they nattered on about school and the chats were heart-achingly brief.

The line went quiet and for a second he feared Gayle had put the phone down.

‘Yes, especially Freddie,’ she answered. ‘He’s a Liverpool fan now. I told him you used to go to matches sometimes so when they’re on the telly he looks for you in the crowd.’

Tears began to course down Alan’s face, the grief he carried inside him every waking moment finally breaking through the dam of self-restraint. He was missing so much of his children growing up.

‘What about the girls?’ he sobbed. ‘Does Lacey still hate me?’

Lacey had been old enough to assimilate snippets from the rows she overheard to form a picture of what was behind them and Alan couldn’t bring himself to lie to her when she confronted him about what he’d done. Theirs was the most precarious of his relationships with his children and the day he moved to Mansell she had shown no emotion as they waved him off.

Kyra had been the opposite, clinging to him in tears, and begging him not to move so far away. But he had no choice – the job at Rushbrooke was the only one he’d been able to get in his situation. Yes, it meant moving hundreds of miles away from Newark but jobs in caretaking were thin on the ground round there and he didn’t have the means or the time to retrain. At that point Gayle wanted him as far away from her as possible – he’d irrevocably broken her trust with all the debts he’d run up and it was only thanks to her parents that they hadn’t lost the house after he’d secretly remortgaged it behind her back and then defaulted on the payments.

‘Please don’t cry,’ she was saying to him now. ‘I hate it when you get upset.’